


Posthumous Viaticum

by Briarwitched



Category: DC Extended Universe, DCU, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Technology, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Not quite Dead Dove Do Not Eat, POV John Constantine, Superman/Superboy centric, clark's gone crazy y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29794038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Briarwitched/pseuds/Briarwitched
Summary: Picks up at the end of Apokolips War.Barry is gone. Staring down the barrel of a dawn they hoped wouldn't come, what's left of the league knows that life must go on. Everyone's running on the ghost of fumes, but John Constantine thinks they have a shot, albeit a tiny one. They might be stuck on a soon to be frozen planet with a chunk of its core missing, but Darkseid's gone, the living have rallied, and they even have the Trinity back in action. There's room for hope.Or at least there would be if only Superman would stop carrying his dead clone kid around with him wherever he goes. Admittedly, that one's a bit of a confidence killer, Clarkie.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Posthumous Viaticum

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up at the end of the movie, so yes, spoilers abound. 
> 
> This little darling was birthed out of my existential despair while watching the credits of Apokolips War, confronted with the knowledge that all life on earth was basically done for unless the magic of comic book time travel came through. It was.... rough. My optimistic streak decided to kick into overdrive and ask the question, "So, what if they're actually just stuck in that reality and the reboot doesn't immediately come through? What could they possibly do?"
> 
> Featuring, HasGoneOffTheDeepEnd Superman and Kon-El, because our boy got robbed with his .03 seconds of screen time, as narrated by John Is-Done-With-Everyone's-Shit Constantine, because his POV worked for the movie and is surprisingly fun to write about depressing topics with.

Barry is gone.

Whether he’s running too fast to be perceived, broken into a new universe, or is actively altering the timeline is unclear. No one even knows if it’s still possible as dawn breaks across the horizon. Uncertainty ripples through what survivors are left of the League, familiar these days in its dark bite and paralyzing nature. 

John Constantine is praying to the older gods. There’s no worship in it, not even a plea for help; Lord knows he’d spent the last two years realizing what a waste of time those were. Sitting around and waiting to be saved is simply too painful, with it’s bleeding edge of not-quite-hope and undeniable vulnerability. The idea scares him almost as much as it entices him. There’s nothing anyone but Barry can do and he gets that, but the whole not knowing anything bit is killing him. John is bloody fucking tired of mysteries.

Deliverance or death almost doesn’t matter at this point. He just wants certainty. 

His prayers are waved away, but there’s a response in that too. 

Answers are slow, vague impressions, filtering through his mind like water through gaps in stone. The half distracted glances from a collection of ancient, powerful beings without any to spare. He brushes up against their thoughts. They are brief and angry and incomplete, but they are something.

Diana is the first to approach him where he’s scratched sigils into the dirt and rocks of Titans’ Island, endlessly raking his hands through them to clear their meanings and writing over them as he switches between deities and divinities. Her cyborg eye bores into him with apathetic malcontent, even if her voice is neutral. Batman and Superman drift over with her, listening. “Have the gods deserted us?”

He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. “Yes and no. The ones still alive, they’re all…” he struggles to condense the thoughts, the ideas, the  _ knowing _ , into words. Wishes he had a ciggy on him. “...panicking. Many stayed dormant thinking they’d survive what humanity couldn’t, but few expected this much damage to the planet itself. They’re either fleeing into other dimensions and realms or preparing for the frost.”

She digests that. “The alteration of the planet’s rotation will either be extreme heat or extreme cold, but we do not know which yet. Are they certain it will be frost?”

“They seem convinced.”

“Will any of them aid us?”

“Wouldn’t count on it, love. Most don’t seem to be sure they can save themselves.” He shrugs, glances out at the water again, at the sparkling light breaking out across it. “Many of them derive energy from the earth, however indirectly, so with the core compromised I’m assuming they couldn’t do much even if they want to. Those who get their strength from other sources, like magic, usually have other residency options than a dying planet. I wouldn’t count on them to stick around.”

“We’re on our own, then,” Batman says.

“What about Barry?” Diana asks. “How will we know if he’s succeeded?”

“We won’t,” John points out. It’s something he’d known when he’d sent Barry off, a part he hadn’t necessarily wanted to contemplate and had hoped would resolve itself without input. He nearly snorted with disgust. Best leave the boundless optimism to the boy scout. “Assuming he succeeds, the universe either changes itself without us knowing or…”

“Or we might be stuck finishing out this timeline,” Batman finished. “While Barry saves a duplicate universe that is created in his efforts to save this one.” He glances around at their bedraggled party on the broken island. Someone is crying softly nearby-- Mera, John thinks, though he doesn’t look round to confirm. “Regardless, we potentially lose everything by waiting to see which outcome it’ll be. We need to continue as though Barry never left.”

Superman nods and almost manages to dredge up a smile. It sticks to his lips like a grimace. “We’ll just have to make our own miracles. I think we’ve got it in us. We’ve already done it today. What’s a few more?”

****

The decision to keep going is met with little enthusiasm, but no resistance. The Trinity, damaged and battered though it may be, is restored. It seems natural that they would resume what they’ve always done: fight the tide, muster the living, and go on. It seems pointless, with almost certain death looming over them like an inevitable tidal wave, but like John, many of the Leaguers find waiting to die more intolerable than literally anything else. 

****

It’s been two weeks and the frost is creeping in. It’s June.

The planet has been spinning for a long time and the force it’s generated cannot be dispelled overnight. The law of averages is what saves them, this time, according to Batman; it has indeed begun to slow by the gravitational loss of their core mass, but very, very gradually. They have a few more weeks to figure something out long term. Perpetual winter it may soon be, but for now the conditions are survivable. 

For now.

Resources are already stretched thin, what with a large chunk of humanity having spent the last few years of living on the run while LexCorp shifted all means to production to Darkseid’s needs, but the League of Shadows (or what remains of it) has stockpiles Damian feels no need to hoard any longer. Enough food and water for a few weeks, at least. 

Prioritizing civilian rescue efforts makes as much sense as anything else. A lot of mouths still come with a lot of hands, which is more beneficial than John expected before he scolds himself for his surprise. Those that have survived this long are generally the self-sustaining or at least resilient types. A ragtag bunch, this lot, but they immediately get to work with the League establishing a refuge in the mountain stronghold and reinforcing it’s insulation as quickly as possible. Food sources are another concern, but luckily, they’ve acquired a group of scientists from somewhere who know a thing or two about hydroponics.

People trickle in by the dozens, but not the hundreds.

Apparently, the surviving civilians need persuading to come onboard. John has to admit to some surprise at that. After all, it’s not like anyone’s odds of making it past the freeze alone are great. The League’s the obvious best bet. Nobody wanting to join up after the disastrous battle that had led to the occupation two years ago made sense, but now? Compared to a year ago, the optics on them are amazing or at least encouraging. Batman might occasionally default to that soulless mobius monotone more often than is comfortable, but his mind is still intact. Diana’s soul is undimmed even if her body is no longer whole. Superman-- the literal symbol of hope and help-- is restored to his peak physical glory as the League’s poster child, despite the thin layer of gray to his hair. 

Okay. Actually, it’s that final piece of the puzzle that seems to displace the public’s faith the most: Big Blue might be whole in body once again, but his mind is very, obviously gone. 

Even survivors of a post apocalyptic hellscape can’t abide how unnerving his madness is. 

It certainly boggles John’s mind. Superman seems alert and salient, gives orders and speeches and words of encouragement with the same bright determinism he’s always had. When the rest of the world has given up, he is everything he once was and everything anyone can ask for.

Maybe all that inspiration and strength would have a chance to sink in if he could just stop carrying his dead clone kid wherever he goes. 

****

Kon El’s body was recovered from the chinese reaper site along with Shazam and Dr. Irons. It hadn’t seemed significant at the time. Once what was left of the League arrived via a zeta tube Batman had somehow managed to cobble together from the technological remains of Titans Tower, everyone numbly set about burying the dead, with little time for lingering grief or ceremony. 

As Supes gathered the kid’s corpse into his arms, staring down at his slack face with mute sorrow, no one had thought much of it. Loss was nothing new these days, but that didn’t mean it didn’t stop you in your tracks once in a while. Everyone simply worked around him and let him grieve. 

(John hadn’t ever spoken with the kid directly, but he remembered seeing him during the occasional League’s Titans’ training missions years ago. Vaguely recalled a bright, energetic personality attached to an incongruously tiny frame, zipping about the dusk sky like a svelte firefly and catcalling his teammates. Stuck close to the green kid. Nothing terribly unique about the kid apart from that ‘S’ shield on his chest that John could recall.)

That night, John pauses in his digging to take a deep breath, arms bent across his shovel and eyes burning with sweat. The air’s cool, not yet nippy, and feels good on his skin. He takes a minute to breathe and just be.

Digging graves for fallen comrades feels like a luxury these days. Christ. 

When he opens his eyes, the boy scout is still holding the corpse. John spares a minute to hope the kid died quickly: his neck hung at a detached angle, lolling, disconnected vertebrae protruding against his skin without piercing it. Snapped clean through. Should have been a fast way to go, but with Kryptonian endurance and ability to cling to life against all odds…

John just hopes it was fast. 

Another hour later, anything useful has been salvaged, the paradooms burned, and the dead buried. Someone mentions making a marker, but no one seems committed. How much longer would any of them live, much less care to commemorate their dead? John pauses in carrying a basket of salvaged microchips pried from parademon armor, seeing Clark use his heat vision to cut through the toppled reaper’s beams while Martian Manhunter levitates the scraps away for melting. The kid is still in his arms, almost absently, yet Shazam and Dr. Irons are buried. His stab of irritation doesn’t quite surprise John. Did they really have the time to spare on a special burial?

John isn’t the only one to notice as they prepare to leave the site. Batman speaks with Clark in low tones. John moves closer and catches the tail end of “--cremation?”

Clark swallows, glancing down at his cloned kid. “I know, I know. I’m just not ready to. In a bit, but not yet.”

****

In the last two weeks, John has seen him put down the corpse only enough times to count on one hand. 

Small blessing: the body doesn’t decompose or go into rigor mortis. In no way does this make the whole carrying him around thing any less creepy. It fills his chest with ice whenever Superman stops to update John on a mission, the kid slumped across his chest and clamped in place with one superpowered arm, head lolling at an impossible angle and mouth slightly agape, reeking heavily of ozone. 

The hero barely seems to notice anymore. Every so often, in between gesturing with his free hand while he explains something, Clark absently tucks the kid’s head beneath his chin to try to correct it’s horrifying, near ninety degree angle. 

John appreciates the effort, unhelpful though it is. It's impossible to even pretend the teen is sleeping. Kon-El’s bloodlessly pale, for one, and his unnatural stillness does nothing to suggest rest. If anything, he looks like an obscene prop in a play no one wants to see, though god help anyone who tries to explain that to Superman. 

****

“Just give me the overview,” Batman sighs. His shoulders are as level and his tone as even as ever, but there is a downward pull to the man that John can’t quite pinpoint. Further down, two makeshift tents away in the impromptu civilian shelter they’ve made, Diana’a and Clark’s voices rise to a crescendo of shouts.

“--you don’t know that!” 

“Good Hera, Kal! They told us--”

John lets out a grumbling breath. “What does it matter? You know what had to have happened. It’s the same that happened the last time we lost civilians. The same thing that will happen the next time.”

“Humor me, John.” Batman crosses his arms. It’s hard to tell with the cowl in place, but he suspects the man’s eyes have fluttered shut. “Don’t let me walk in blind.”

John sucks in a long, harsh inhale, dredging up the remaining shreds of his patience as he shoves away the intake tablet he won’t be needing anymore. Drops it on top of the crates of emergency supplies that likely won’t be opened tonight. They’re somewhere on the Australian Coast (the only fucking nice part in the whole stupid country) and right now, John would rather walk into the ocean and drown than finish out this miserable fucking shift. “Same thing as before. The caravan came, Clark got sent out to greet them, and they spent maybe ten minutes talking to him with his dead kid staring at them before they fucking packed right up and hauled off.”

Batman hesitates. “You’re sure it was because of--”

“Bloody hell, man. What else could it be?” John snaps, dragging a hand through his hair and digging in his pockets for a pack of cigarettes he knows isn’t there but a conscious part of his brain desperately prays he’s mistaken about. “They’d already signed on for extraction and sent us a roster of survivors. The hard part was over.” John clenches his fists in his pockets and takes another deep breath. “Look, truth be told, they were skittish from the get go. One of the groups that’s probably skirmished with other civilians or been duped by those military factions, I surmise. One of the little girls recognized Kon from his social media profile….”

He doesn’t actually vocalize anything, but when Batman grimaces, John can hear his dread all the same. 

“...and asked if Superboy was okay.”

Batman’s jaw worked. “And Clark--”

“Did not lie. He barely fucking paused to say ‘oh, he’s dead’ and went right back to explaining the intake process. Course, he also shifted Kon so he could demonstrate something on the screen and his head did that lolling, almost poking bone through skin thing it does--”

“I see.”

“No, they saw,” John snaps. He’s more than a little wound up from the leftover, helpless frustration he’d seen in those civilian’s eyes. From seeing it all without being able to alter the outcome. So far as feeling hopeless in a world like this went, he hadn’t thought it would be because of Superman, the literal symbol of hope. “And they couldn’t get the hell out of dodge fast enough. Offering aid right now should be like offering babies at a Fae feast and they fucking turned tail because Superman’s carting around a well known preteen idol’s corpse like some sort of fucked up mascot and couldn’t be bothered to fucking lie to a child about it. Two other kids started crying. It was brutal, Bats. I love Clarkie as much as anyone these days, but when that lady leading the group bailed, I didn’t blame her. We look fucking insane sending him out like that. He’s supposed to be the best of us and if he’s that fucking snapped past sense, what does that say about the rest of us?”

However far out of his own head John knows himself to be, it must be pretty obvious to the other man that he’s nearly frayed to snapping. Batman studies him for half a second before he reaches into his belt and thrusts something at him. 

John nearly cries at the sight of a crumpled, half finished pack of ciggies.

Batman hands him a book of matches while he’s at it. “Take a smoke break, then start packing up. Diana and I will handle it.”

****

Kon is never buried. 

Perhaps the lack of rot is more detriment than benefit. It's certainly pushed the issue down a few notches on Diana and Bruce’s to-do lists, once they shuffle around his civilian duties. Not that John blames them-- starvation and hypothermia lick at their heels, threatening to devour them with every step. 

****

Damian crosses his arms, glaring at Clark as he counts boxes of rations in the storage room, Kon slumped over his shoulder. Raven hovers like a ghost nearby, tense, but resigned. “You know he’s dead,” Bruce’s arsehole child says aloud, hands clasped behind his back. Somehow he’s managed to keep his voice on the hostile side of neutral.

Clark raises a quizzical eyebrow, a bemused smile on his face as he shifts Conner’s weight in his arms. That damn head lolls off his shoulder at a ninety degree angle and he stops to adjust it, patting the corpse on the back in apology. (Christ almighty. John suppresses a shudder just watching it out of the corner of his eye.) “Yes.”

“And you’ve tried leaving him in the sunlight since,” Damian continues. “And confirmed that the reaper site was exposed to a large amount of it before we got there.”

“That too, yes.”

“And that we altered the parameters of our scanners in the face of your supposed Doomsday death to avoid making that error in evaluating your vital signs again-- meaning that Conner’s vital signs should be well without our scanner’s detection.”

Clark nods and tilts the label of a nearby box towards himself to read it better. “As far as I understand it.”

“Therefore, it’s fair to say that you have confirmed that he is permanently dead and will not be waking.”

“I’ve assumed as much,” Clark agrees matter of factly, marking something on his tablet’s inventory list with a stylus before scribbling it out and adding a correction.

“Which means,” Damian says, every word pointed and loaded with finality. “He needs to be buried.”

“Of course he does,” Clark says, eyes tightening ever so slightly. He forcibly turns back to his work. “But not right now.”

Damian’s fists clench at his sides. Raven drifts closer to set a hand on his arm. He doesn’t shake it off. “Why not? He’s gone. He died  _ weeks ago _ . There’s nothing you can do for him now. Let him go.”

Clark shakes his head, setting the inventory list on a nearby crate so he can use his free hand to drape his cape over the body like a privacy curtain. “I know that and I will. Don’t worry about it.”

“This is ridiculous,” Damian spits, loud enough to summon additional attention. Batman appears in the doorway. This isn’t Damian’s first attempt to have this conversation and probably won’t be the last, in John’s estimation, though it’s the longest it's gone on without someone intervening. “He’s not a doll. You can’t just carry him around like a damn stuffed animal.”

Clark scowls and angles Kon’s body away from Damian defensively. “He doesn’t mind.”

“He doesn’t mind anything,” Damian seethes, taking a step forward. “Because he’s dead. Put him in the ground where he belongs or burn him. Bury him with his grandparents if that’s so important to you, but do not continue to dishonor him like this. If you need a damn emotional support animal, get a puppy or try carrying around an actual, living child. There’s lots of orphans you could cart around, insane though you are--”

“I’m not insane,” Clark snaps as Batman steps between them. “And I can’t just abandon him in the ground like that. You, of all people, should understand.”

“Don’t you dare, alien--”

Superman was shaking his head. “Dick was--”

“And look what that turned him into!” Damian’s face twists in anger, though John detects a tremor undercutting his voice. He whirls around, shoving past his father’s hands. 

****

Someone once said that madness was something between chaos and having a dream. That’s the only explanation Constantine can come up with for such massive, daily cognitive dissonance: Clark appears to have embraced the idea that Conner is dead, yet treats him like he is asleep. Shroedinger’s corpse, if you will. John’s rooms are near the Kryptonian’s, and while he lacks x-ray vision, he’s seen the door ajar enough times to determine that Conner has his own cot and blanket beside Clark’s. Once or twice, he’s spotted Superman bouncing Conner slightly in his arms as he goes about his work, like the teen clone is a beleaguered toddler Clark isn’t doing a good enough job humoring. 

It makes John’s stomach shrivel every time. 

****

Madness might be kissing cousins with chaos, but even dreams have logic to them. It doesn’t make any sense. Had they really been that attached to each other? John has vague impressions of playful flying tackles Conner often aimed at his genetic donor in greeting, earning a laugh and mock air battle in return. It had seemed fond, but not the way people who were very present in each other’s lives were. Like it was a bit of a treat to see each other. Looking at it through various mental lenses since, John still couldn’t be certain whether the boy scout had thought of the kid as a son, a little brother, or a new puppy. 

Raven doesn’t have much insight either, the single time they speak of it during watch duty. Her eyes are tired, but without the jewel on her forehead screaming abuse at her at all hours, her physical and mental health seems to have improved, at least enough to talk about the past with him. Kon’s time with the Titans had been brief, she says, but she knew he’d lived with his grandparents and zeta tubed to the Tower after school, while Clark dropped by once or twice a month to check on him. 

If anything, John is even more baffled. They hadn’t exactly been fixtures in each other’s day to day, from what he’s gathering. Technically Conner wasn’t his kid (in the traditional sense, anyway) and Raven’s accounts don’t make it sound like they’d known each other very well, so what is it about this loss that Superman can’t wrap his head around? 

Maybe it was losing Lois so recently, John eventually decides on, as the League sets about confronting the cold as the world’s plant life begins to shrivel under it’s cruel grip. The ashes of her body were far too scattered to cling to and Clark’s parents are presumably dead in the way that most people presumably are, so perhaps Kon is pulling double duty for a myriad of griefs.

****

The civilians, for the most part, avoid Clark when they see him coming. He neither seems to notice nor care, though the members of the League who can’t exactly get around interacting with him and his corpse doll are a lot more unhappy about the situation. Not only do they have to pick up the role of middlemen and convey the civilian reports, they have to do it while trying not to make eye contact with Kon, whose pale lids occasionally drift open into a myopic stare. 

Even those who didn’t know the kid think it unkind to make him wait so long to lay to rest. Not that his friends have any more luck: Raven’s appeals on the basis of souls, Damian’s open confrontations, and even Starfire’s gentle suggestions go unheeded. (Dick’s contributions of snarls and strained laughter don’t have enough of a central theme to decipher, John supposes, but he seems to recognize the corpse. His arms strain the straightjacket every time he sees it, like he wants to take Kon from Clark. ((Hopefully to bury.))((( It’s the thought that counts.)))

They might as well be talking about the weather. 

Clark seems impervious both to their criticism and the looming requirement of burial. If anything, it becomes such a given that the body be a factor in his day that he settles into a routine, carrying the boy with him for certain hours and leaving him in his cot for scheduled tasks that require both hands. It’s only a small window, but already people around him have adjusted to approaching him specifically during his ‘sane’ hours.

That’s probably why Damian decides to take things into his own.

****

The first shrill scream echoes through the stronghold rips John from his sleep. Glass shatters. Shivering and distantly aware of the way his breath plumes in front of his face, he stumbles to the window and peers out. 

Superman hovers over the courtyard, having hurled himself face first through the window. His head whips around, obviously searching for something. Fat white flakes swirl through the air, nearly obscuring him in the weak light of the night. 

His eyes glow a desperate, angry red. 

Another wailing scream, like he’d been run through with a kryptonite spear. He halts briefly, the sound cutting off abruptly before he disappears in a blur towards the icy forest lining the east mountains. 

Yawning deeply, John entertains the idea of going back to sleep, but he can hear the others congregating in the hallway and decides that the commotion is going to make sleep impossible anyway. Last he checked, the only objectives tonight were to continue the never-ending feeding of the coal ovens that heated the upper stone levels (the alien fusion generators they were trying to build in the basement were proving more technically complex than they’d hoped and progress was slow). 

Batman and Wonder Woman are both in the hallway, wearily confronting a flinty eyed Damian. 

“--not just me. Everyone is appalled. Even the civilians-- no, especially the civilians, can barely stomach looking at him even when he leaves him in his rooms. He’s almost doing more to hurt our cause than he contributes to it, and we all know that is saying something so don’t insult me by pretending we don’t. People need Superman to make them believe things are going to be okay, that we can survive the month. He’s practically a walking example of mental suicide.”

“Clark’s hope outlasted everyone’s. We couldn’t have beaten Darkseid without it. Do not discount that.” Diana’s voice is stern, but tired. 

“Pushing him to his breaking point won’t help anyone, either,” Batman points out, looking towards the window Clark smashed through where Raven is now levitating sheet metal to close the breach before the life preserving warm air can escape. “We don’t have to sell the civilians we’ve picked up on trusting us anymore. They have no other real options with the frost. His behavior, while off-putting, cost us nothing now. Antagonizing him needlessly--.”

“Don’t pretend it was a tactical decision. You never pushed him so you didn’t have to feel bad that you got your son back and he didn’t,” Damian counters. “They aren’t the same thing.”

Batman’s eyes narrow under the cowl. He still wears it most days.

Diana acquiesces with a tilt of her head, placing a gentle hand on the teen’s shoulder. “We’ve all had our share of madness, Damian, and Clark is our friend. It was unnerving and uncomfortable, yes, but he wasn’t hurting anyone.”

Damian looks away, shoulders tight and his face pinched. Barely containing himself. “Conner was  _ my _ friend and it was hurting  _ me _ . He’s not a toy. He fought bravely to take down that reaper, even though he was a crybaby who missed his grandparents and was scared of dying and had nightmares about being made into one of Darkseid’s lab rats every night and  _ he deserved a proper burial _ .”

“Damian…” Batman says, voice trailing into something of a sigh.

Diana shakes her head, but her voice is full of distant sympathy, like the rumbles of far off thunder. “I understand why you did what you did. You seek to honor your friend as we seek to honor ours, but please do not take rash action like this again. Talk to us. In these times, there are no easy answers--”

“I tried!” Damian slams his hand into the stone wall beside him, cutting her off. “This isn’t about easy, it’s about necessary. It had to be done, Father, whether he was ready for it or not,” Damian forces out. “And so I’ve done it for him. Maybe now he can accept what everyone else can plainly see.”

****

Superman does not accept a damn thing.

When he returns an hour later with Kon’s corpse and himself covered in frozen, icy mud, he locks himself in his room and refuses to respond to anyone. There’s only so long anyone can try before they have to attend to the needs of the many. 

Keeping things running in his absence is hard. It’s not just the extensive amount of work he has handled up until now (needing less sleep than a human meant he’d been doing a little of everything for every shift), but the impact this has on morale. 

A pensive hush falls over the compound; this unwelcome reminder that even the most stable existences now balance by precarious threads. Those who didn’t see anything fear the worst; that he’s dying, that he’s finally snapped beyond hope. A small hiccup in the heating system shakes everyone’s faith, even when heat is restored within the hour. A slight miscalculation in the water supply, though barely noticeable, feels world ending.

One of the civilian families commits murder-suicide. It’s hard to tell if the timing is related, but it’s even harder to imagine it isn’t.

When Superman eventually emerges two days later, at the coaxing of Batman and Wonder Woman, he looks worse than when he’d approached John in that London pub pumped full of liquid Kryptonite. The gray in his hair is prominent again. His beard is starting to come in too, unkempt, and his eyes have lost much of their remaining luster. He’s still covered in streaks of mud and his hair is uncombed, though Conner has been cleaned of his grave dirt and changed into a fresh Superboy uniform.

The message is clear: whatever the reason and however distasteful, Kon’s presence is non-negotiable.

An intervention is held and a compromise is swiftly reached. Damian is kept well away from Clark and the talk of burying Kon is abandoned. A neck brace is procured for the corpse and Clark is told, in no uncertain terms, the body must remain wrapped in a blanket at all times. 

It’s creepy to watch him carry a bundled corpse, but more tolerably so. Things are a little better after that.

****

John is praying again. Pages scatter across his room, notes and scrawls on whatever scraps of paper he can get his hands on and tack on the walls. Receipts, half withered printer paper, all scrawled over with thick marker or even charcoal when that runs out. Throw in some red string and it would look like he was trying to solve an ancient pagan murder mystery. Resources are already stretched thin and unmarked paper and working pens are rare. Magic candles are even harder to procure and more precious than food at the moment, but it’s not like he can think of a better occasion to use them than the end of the world, can he?

The flame sputters, threatening to go out at any turn.

The older gods are the only one he can sense anymore. He shoves down the flood of dread following on the tail end of that thought. It doesn’t necessarily mean the younger deities are dead, per se, just that they’ve either closed themselves off or opted for some kind of stasis. 

Or they could just be dead. He doesn’t really have it in him to lie to himself anymore, even for comfort.

He isn’t quite sure what any of this means for magic going forward, but then again, nothing looks good going forward so why should magic be exempt?

They’re not even giving him the brush off anymore. 

A change in focus might help, he decides, taking a swig from a bottle of gin he’d pilfered from a frozen corpse on a mission earlier that day. Or at least he thought it was gin. He sniffed it and took another swig. Actually, he probably shouldn’t be drinking with the ever-rarer painkillers he’d been granted earlier. 

He actually snorts at the thought. What’ll it do? Kill him?

Instead of blindly reaching out and hoping for a bite, maybe he should choose a specific question? Something finite. Something easier to explain. Something that might get him a quick yes or a no, however much he dearly wants more information. That usually netted the attention of lower spirits and beings, if they shared a mutual or particular interest. It’s not ideal given the magnitude of their predicament, but it’s also not like he has anything to lose by aiming lower. He’s already being ignored. 

Shivering, he centers himself and lights the candle again, holding the flame close to his lips. “Can the earth’s rotation be fixed?”

No response.

“What can we do to survive the cold?” he whispered into the flame.

Nothing. 

Too big a question for anyone to bother trying to answer, but what else was there? There were only big questions left! It wasn’t like he wanted the odds on the next polo game or help tracking down a wayward sprite. He nearly hurls the candle away, tightening his grip until hot wax spills over his fingers and jolts him. Lets out a disgusted sigh. 

There’s a knock on his door. 

“Just another bloody thing tonight,” he mutters, snuffing the candle and glancing at his pages woefully. He hasn’t showered like he planned to when he retired for the evening, but it wasn’t like everyone else in the compound was a right fresh spring chicken either, so that wasn’t worth griping over. The warm water would have been nice on his feet, though. Wincing, he clambers upright and hobbles over to the door to tug it open. 

Starfire gives him a tired smile. Or tries to, around the metallic Apokolyptian jaw that’s replaced her natural one. Her lone natural eye crinkles in a smile-y way, at least. “Suit up,” she says. “We’ve got reports of a former government lab near Anchorage. Batman has a list of tech for us to check for. There might still be civilians in the area too.”

John squints at her. “There’s been a mixup then. I’m off the roster, love.” He points to his feet, stockinged, but somehow both pale and ruddy underneath with second degree frostbite. She can’t see it, but most of the non-metas who go out in the field have some form of it at the moment. “Body temperature’s been all over the place since I got back from the morning raid so--”

Her metallic body creaks as she shifts. Tamaraneans are a hardy bunch, from what he understands, but he wonders if any of it aches in the cold, where it meets what remains of her flesh. “I’m afraid you’re being subbed in. Superman refuses to go.”

“What? Why?”

“He won’t leave Conner... unattended.”

John sighs. “I’ll talk to him. Meet point four?”

“That is correct. I expect either one of you there in ten minutes,” she said, turning to go. She pauses briefly. “If it is you tonight, I will do my best to keep you from the worst of the exposure, but I cannot promise anything. My powers have been unpredictable. I am sorry.”

“It ain’t your fault, dear. Don’t let me hold you up.” John waves her off and crosses the hallway to hammer on the boy scout’s door. Silence. “Oi, Clarkie, it’s me,” he says, unnecessarily. “I know you’ve already seen me so you might as well open it.”

A sigh. The door tugs open. Clark is still in his uniform, though he’s missing his cape. He eyes John with something like a wary apology. “I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to--”

“Right, right, cause Bat’s brat will knick your kid’s body. I got it.” John sighs and gestures at his door behind him. “Hide him in my room. I’ll keep an eye on him while you’re away. I can’t promise I can take the littlest assassin in a fight, but I’ll hail you over the comms if he tries anything and snitch to Batman if he tries to stop me. The team needs you. I can barely walk, much less have anyone’s back like this. The least I can do is… babysit.”

Clark’s eyes waver before he nods. There’s a flash of blue and red before Superman is dressed in his full uniform and clutching his teenager-sized paperweight. He flicks a glance at the hallway and, after confirming it’s empty, blurs out of existence and returns empty handed. “I’ll try to come back as soon as I can, but you may have to watch him until morning. If there’s civilians in the area, negotiating and relocating them will likely fall to me.”

Well, thank god he wouldn’t be trotting around with a dead kid over his shoulder, then.

John decides to not say that bit out loud, taking a swig of his flask and raising his eyebrows. “Oh, Con’s a right old handful, but I think I can manage. Have a safe mission.”

Back in his room, John stares at the wrapped bundle gently laid behind a hand painted folding screen that had been left in his room and was now covered in handwritten runes. Debates internally before going over to carefully draw back the gray wool blanket. Morbid curiosity is something of a given these days and part of him wants a closer look for the sake of knowing if Clark is truly crazy or if somehow the kid was trapped in some sort of mid-death state. After all, John reasons, Superman himself came back from the dead. Just because their scanners couldn’t detect his vital signs doesn’t mean the scanners were right. Maybe Kon-El is taking the long way round, despite not responding to sunlight. Maybe he just hasn’t had enough-- 

Nope. John prods a still cheek. Not a spark of life, magic, or soul to be found. Kid is dead as a doornail. 

Looks grand for a dead boy, though. Conner’s face is largely unchanged; not so much as a hint of stiffness and holding steady at room temperature. If it wasn’t for the utter lack of spiritual and vital signs, he really would have thought he was comatose, especially with the neck brace preventing the zombie-like death poses the boy would otherwise slump into. 

Constantine closes the blanket and goes back to his candle, mind already flicking back to the mission roster as he relights it. God, he’s so tired and cold. The thought of going on any mission ever again makes him want to howl but it's not like there's much he can do about it. If it’s not him, it’ll be someone else and he’s not even the worst off of the strictly human squad. There’s not much the League can do about anything except gather as many people as possible and try to survive while Batsy tries to come up with a better plan. That’s already near impossible as it is.

He presses his palms to his eye sockets and takes a deep breath. “Come on, John-o,” he mutters. “One thing at a time. One problem after another.” He glances back at the wool wrapped bundle he’s assumed temporary responsibility for and tries not to groan. “Gods in hell, how the devil are we going to fix Clark?”

The candle flickers, thoughtfully.

John stares at it, wide eyed. Chokes out, “I mean, not necessarily just hell gods, but if anyone has any ideas for fixing Space Jesus, I’m all ears.”

He almost convinces himself he’s imagined it, almost convinces himself to put out the candle with a bitter huff, when the response trickles in. The mind surrounding it weighs down on him, like bog water and rotting plant matter--  _ hello Swampy, lovely to hear from you _ \-- but the contact is both mercifully and twistingly short.

But it is certain.

****

“ _ Put Kon in the pit _ ,” Batman intones. “That is exactly what Dr. Holland said?”

“Exactly.” Glancing at the folding divider currently blocking the view of the body, John decides that this is as good a time as any to allow himself a precious ciggy (he’s only got twelve left and smoking each one feels like the countdown of his willingness to survive). He fumbles one out, struggling with his thrice-soaked through matchbook. 

Diana gently takes the match from his fingers and swipes it against the groove of a metal arm. It erupts into a swift flame and she holds it up for him as he gratefully lights up. Not even a brutally upgraded body can dim her natural elegance. “Did he happen to say why?”

John shook his head. “It wasn’t a conversation. He’s too busy trying to winterize the green with the help of… others. I just got-- an impression, a thought, an image all wrapped into one little package. I won’t be able to get more from him, I don’t think. Generously assuming he’s still alive right now. He felt weak.”

The cowled gaze gives little away. “And you think he means the Lazarus Pit.”

“No, I  _ know _ he means the Lazarus Pit,” John counters, exhaling a plume of smoke with something like a faint moan. God, he just wanted to tear his way through the whole pack. Be done with it all. “He sent an image of it to me. Glowing green water, in a cave. The whole nine yards-- and an image of the kid-- which, by the way, I didn’t even know he knew who Kon was.”

Batman and Wonder Woman looked at each other. “So far as I know,” Batman said. “They’ve never met.”

John takes an almost desperate drag on his cigarette, shifting on his feet. Glances back at the dead kid. “Think we should do it?”

Diana looks to Batman. “I have little experience with such things. What say you?”

“Those who go into the pit emerge mad,” Batman said, without preamble. “Case in point: Dick. And I’ve never heard of anyone coming back from long term death using it. Half dead, nearly dead, and even recently dead are workable, but Kon El has been gone for weeks. It should be impossible.”

John nodded. “I don’t get it either. There’s no spirit clinging to that body. Even magical means of resurrection require one, unless we get into blind necromancy, which is really just reanimation that sometimes involves ghosts and whatnot, but that’s not what the Lazarus pit does anyway.”

Diana looks between them. “Kon El does possess certain genetic advantages. We certainly did not understand Kal’s death in its entirety. The boy has not decayed as we expected, so perhaps his spirit is similarly misunderstood. I can’t imagine Dr. Holland would contact you at all if his words were not important.”

“I can imagine one or two,” John muttered. “We ain’t exactly on good terms.”

She raises an eyebrow at that. “What are the disadvantages to trying?”

“The mental instability upon return is the most pressing issue,” Batman muses. “They come back violent. Seething. Tainted. Again, take Dick as a prime example-- and bear in mind that Damian says he’s calmed since Starfire returned. I do not know that we can afford that sort of liability even were Conner fully human, but factor in a half kryptonian’s strength and he’d be impossible to keep in check. Dick is barely manageable.” Batman holds out his hand to John. 

It takes a full second to realize he was requesting the cigarette. Stunned, he watches the Bat pull off his cowl and take a short drag before exhaling a soft plume of smoke. Rubs at tired, brown eyes. 

It’s the most human Constantine has seen Bats since he’d snapped out of Darkseid’s hold and realized he’d murdered his son. “I think we should do it anyway,” Bruce says, after a minute drifts past them.

Diana’s lips quirk into an almost smile. “Learning to trust the gods?”

“Far from it,” Bruce counters. He pauses, obviously searching for the right words. “I think it will be good for Clark. That was what the request was actually about; you did not ask how to fix Conner, only how to help  _ Clark _ , though I don’t know why Holland has any insight on the matter. It’s not important. Either submerging him in the pit works, somehow, and Clark gets the miracle he needs to function normally or it doesn’t. Perhaps that will be enough to help him let go. To know he truly tried everything.”

Diana nods, something wistful as she glances out the window at the dark, frigid landscape beyond. A faint aurora paints the sky-- a sign of the weakening magnetosphere. “Perhaps Holland’s words are meant for us.” She tapped her nails against her shattered metallic eye. “After all, not a one of us is whole anymore. It is arguably unfair to expect more of Kal. Perhaps it is us who must let go.”

****

“I don’t like it,” Clark says. He shifts on his feet, content to leave Conner on the ground so long as he remains in his direct line of sight. 

John’s mouth actually drops open. “Are you bloody serious?”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, I just--” Clark looks down at his red boots. Crosses his arms. “What if it hurts him? What if it… eats away at him?”

Batman puts a hand on his arm, his face still exposed. His eyes are lined, the crows feet deep and long, but there is also a gentleness that Constantine has never seen from the man. “I know it feels like a risk and it is, but I promise you, Clark, I would not recommend this if I thought it would cause him any harm. I’m not an expert in the pit’s chemical composition, though I’ve studied it before. What I do know makes me confident that there's nothing in there that will kickstart decay. No bacteria. No microscopic life forms. Even if it fails to help him, it shouldn’t damage his cells.” He nudges him, a wry twist to his lips. “Worse case scenario, we dunk him in some green water and he needs another bath. That’s all.”

“Or it could bring him back.”

“Or it could bring him back,” Batman agrees. 

Superman takes a deep breath and looks up. “Okay. I just--” he broke off, jaw working. “I just worry that he’s still… aware. Like I was. When I died. I know the bots revived me and kept me in stasis, but I remember things. Snatches of sound and light. Moments where I understood that I was dead but I could still feel my body, even if I didn’t necessarily feel like I was still in it. I don’t know if that’s because of the bots or if I dreamt it but now I’m afraid that kryptonian brains don’t die the same way.” He looks back at the wrapped body, something haggard stealing across his face. He dragged a hand across his eyes. “Maybe it’s pointless, but I just don’t want him to suffer anymore. Or experience his own cremation. Or feel the dirt poured over his face as he's buried. Or dissolved in a sketchy pit of magic zombie acid.”

Diana’s voice is soft. “Oh, Kal. You should have said. Your reasoning is--”

“You mean, that I have some at all? I think what you’re trying to say is that I should have mentioned it so people wouldn’t think I’ve gone completely nuts.” He shakes his head harshly. “Except I know I have. Having  _ a reason _ doesn’t make it a  _ good one _ . I didn’t say anything before now because I don’t want to have the debate outside my head. It all boils down to  _ how I’ll never know if he’s in there _ . He’s dead, but I’ll never know for certain if he’s aware on some level. I keep waiting to feel sure, to finally be able to say it doesn’t matter because he’s functionally dead so it won’t get any better for him and I can’t keep doing this if we’re going to survive another week, but that day never comes. Every morning, I wake up and I can’t talk myself out of one more day. I always owe him at least one more day.”

“The world owes a lot of people a lot of things,” Bruce says, after the silence has stretched. “That doesn’t mean you can expect yourself to--”

“You don’t get it, Bruce,” Clark snaps, blinking back tears. “I didn’t get to help him  _ at all _ . The whole time I was here, trying to rally whoever could fight, I knew where he was. He went straight back to the farm after the Titans fell and then found Lois but--” his voice breaks. “We were both so happy when we first saw each other. Joy, like I hadn’t felt in ages, just to get a glimpse of him-- alive and whole. He flew over to hug me and crashed before he could get within ten yards, vomiting. I was pumped full of liquid kryptonite, remember? With my powers gone, I’d already accepted that I couldn’t save him, but  _ I couldn’t even hug him _ .”

“That’s why you have to take care of him now,” Bruce says. It isn’t a question. “Because you couldn’t then.”

Clark covers his face with his hands. “He was two and a half years old and scared and he died alone because I asked him to go. So yes. I have to make sure he doesn’t suffer any more for that even if it's impractical or crazy. I know he’s dead. At least… I really, very much hope that he is.” 

“Clark…”

He pulls his hands away to scrub at his eyes. “I just-- fine. I’ll give it a shot. If it won’t hurt him… Let’s put him in the pit.”

****

The cave’s chamber glows green, light undulating across the walls and cavernous ceiling like serpents emerging from the grass of the savanna. Constantine almost wishes he’d not come, but given the rather arcane nature of the pits, it was deemed necessary in case things got out of hand. Not that he could do a whole bloody lot if that were the case, as ragged as he’s been run, though he feels better having Raven and Starfire with him as backup. Magic spells were all well and good until you got a face full of panicked laser vision--

Clark’s face screws up as he approaches the water, Conner in his arms. The kid’s been dressed in a cotton shirt and sweatpants. “It smells rancid. Doesn’t it smell rancid to you?”

“You’ve smelled worse,” Bruce points out. He studies the man carefully. “Cold feet?”

“A little. Let’s just get this over with.” Clark takes a deep breath and steps carefully into the pool, holding Kon well above the water line. It comes up to about his waist and while his ripples fizz like club soda, it doesn’t seem to dissolve his clothes. Whatever it’s made up of is thick enough to render Clark’s legs into dark silhouettes. Clark stares uneasily at the lapping surface. “How long do I have to hold him under?” he asks. 

“With humans, the effects are noticeable after a few seconds,” Batman says. 

Damian shifts on his feet beside his father, face tight and angry, but he says nothing. It’s a fight he’s already lost, if still a term of surrender he wishes to supervise. Raven notices, of course, and goes to his side to take his hand, accepting the curt nod. John wants to call the brat a hypocrite, but doesn’t: having experienced this exact same thing with Grayson has probably done more to convince Damian of the dangers of the Lazarus Pit than literally any other experience could. There’s a wisdom to hypocrites, one that John would normally heed, but there is also something to be said for listening to ancient earth spirits when they bother to have an opinion. 

It’s a risk, but so is breathing on this failing fucking planet, so why the fuck not?

“Here goes nothing.” Superman lets out a loud exhale and lowers Kon under the surface. 

The water immediately begins bubbling around him. Clark twists to give Batman a desperate look. “Are you sure it won’t dissolve him?”

“I’m seventy three percent certain.” At Clark’s open mouth look of horror, he adds, “That’s the highest probability of outcome I’ve seen in weeks that isn’t in favor of imminent demise. Give it a minute.”

In the pool, Kon El twitches.

Everyone tenses. John finishes the last swig in his flask and tosses it away. It could just be the bubbles, of course, or some stimulation of his nervous system. Just because his body is undecayed and possible operable, doesn’t mean his mind is and everybody is well aware of this fact. Even if the pit manages to restart his heart, if there isn’t a soul to occupy it, it's a lost cause at best and an open invitation for a malevolent possession at worst.

John really hates his job sometimes. 

At Batman’s nod, Starfire rises into the air and hovers gently over the pit. “Let us see if adding solar radiation helps,” she says, drifting so that the toes of her boots nearly touch Superman’s shoulder. She raises a glowing green palm. Her brow furrows in concentration and the light shifts slowly to yellow. “I can share some of mine.”

Kon spasms under the water. There is barely enough time for a shocked gasp to fill the room before his spine arches and his arms extend. He flails and twists just under the surface. There’s a cracking, crunching sound-- like celery snapping. 

_ Oh _ , John muses with a wince, ears ringing with the echo of it.  _ I think that was his neck. _

“Leave him until he comes up himself,” Batman orders before Clark can surge forward to retrieve him. 

Kon thrashes, splashing Clark with more cloudy green water. The hero tenses, arms half outstretched, restraining himself from snatching the small form. Even Starfire is reaching with both hands, barely holding herself in check before she doubles down and radiates light with both palms. Kon turns in the water again and scissors, raking his hands along the bottom of the pit and sending torn rocks splashing across the surface.

He halts suddenly and sinks out of sight. A few bubbles burst lazily to the surface. 

Seconds tick by.

Starfire’s light sputters out uncertainly. 

Clark makes a low, anxious keening noise in the back of his throat. 

The water erupts. Kon slams against the stalactite studded ceiling above and hammers it with his fists, howling like a banshee. With a sharp crack, thousand year old formations break and drop into the water. “He could bring the cave down on us--!” Batman barks. Someone cries out and then Superman and Starfire have him locked in the cages of their arms and tow him back to shore.

Kon is still and silent but most certainly not dead by the time they reach the group huddled at the edge. Starfire releases her hold as Clark angles him onto the ground and holds him up by the shoulders. Shakes him gently. “Conner?”

The teen’s eyes are half open in a daze, but his pupils seem to track movement. He’s breathing, heaving in rasping breaths even as his entire frame wilts with exhaustion. Without Clark’s grip keeping him upright, there’s not a doubt in John’s mind the boy would collapse like a ragdoll. Conner’s fists clench reflexively and he looks down at them, making a clear effort to relax them. Pale, clear crystal fragments mixed with geyserite litter the floor. 

“Conner?” Clark tries again. “Conner, can you hear me?”

Batman’s cautionary arm bars them from either crowding him or getting close enough to strike. 

Conner tips forward onto his palms and retches green water, coughing. He sucks in more wheezing gasps and looks up. Without a single word, he grabs Starfire’s wrist with one shaking arm, dragging her palm to his forehead. 

Well, he’s not growling in enochian or spitting ancient curses. John’ll take it.

He actually manages a laugh, or more accurately, a disbelieving, ragged noise rips itself from his throat. “Personality of a demanding housecat, this one. I think he wants you to turn the sun back on, love.”

****

Batman crouches beside Conner and Clark, frowning at his handheld scanner’s readout while the rest of them drift around the cave. Raven and Damian lean on a rock nearby, watching carefully from where the former is recovering from the heavy bout of healing magic (Kon’s vitals have stabilized and, as far as she can tell, the right soul is in the right body. John’s mind boggles.) “Everything reads as healthy, including his vocal chords.”

“Well, they have to be. He yelled when he hit the ceiling,” Clark points out. His face is wet with tear tracks and his arm is wrapped more comfortably around Kon’s shoulder, while Kon leans on him. “He’s probably just too tired to talk yet. Aren’t you, scout?” 

Conner tips his head in a nod. The sudden introduction of healthy blood flow has done more for his appearance than even his repaired neck. He’s yet to actually form words, but he’s nodded and shaken his head enough times in response to Batman’s questions for them to confirm he’s lucid and unexpectedly non-violent.

Damian comes over, having presumably composed himself, his eyes red rimmed but dry. “I see you’ve managed to not be such a crybaby this time, clone boy.” He flicks a glance at the still weeping Clark, though it is oddly lacking in hostility. “Though I can see where you get it from.”   
  


Conner smiles and tosses a rock at him. 

Damian catches it with one hand, rolling his eyes as he does so. “And your stunning wit remains the same, vocal chords or no. I wouldn’t--” He frowns down at his hand, turning over the crystal in his palm. “Wait. This was in pieces a minute ago.”

“Bat Brat’s right. Those were all fragments a minute ago.” John kneels down to free a small sliver of crystal from a crumbling piece of whatever thick white sediment must line the Lazarus Pit’s bottom. It’s drawn sharply to the cluster in Damian’s hand, slotting immediately against the surface like iron shavings to a magnet. “What the…”

Clark holds out his free hand. “Give me that,” he orders tersely. Somewhat uncharacteristically, Damian obeys. He draws it close. “I think this is Kryptonian sunstone,” he breathes. “Starfire’s light must have charged it.”

“Isn’t that the material the fortress was made out of?” Batman asks. 

“It was, but… I don’t understand what this is doing this far south. Maybe some fractured pieces of it were scattered when Darkseid destroyed it, but they wouldn’t be buried like this. As far as I know, the fortress was the only sunstone on earth but this…” Clark holds it up for his friend to see, tracing the edges with his thumbnail. “...this writing on the side isn’t kryptonian. Or, rather, it isn’t modern standard kryptonian. It’s older.”

“Great. An alien antique in the halls of my ancestors.” Damian scowls. “So is this stuff useful?”

“Very,” Superman says, turning the little rock in his hand so that it catches the light. “Sunstone was Krypton’s most prized resource. It can be, well, programmed, to link and unlink to itself into limitless formations, as well as conduct information and transfer solar power. Kryptonians used it in almost all of their architecture and technology. Technically, it can make just about anything: weapons, ships, medical equipment, art. You just need enough of it.”

Kon points to the ceiling. They follow the line of his finger, to see more winking crystal gleaming as Starfire shifts her light to make it easier to see. A few errant pieces crumble away from the ceiling, snapping together before they tumble into the water below. Within seconds, they inch out of the pit and begin lining the edges closest to them.

Batman’s voice is terse. He stares at the lazarus pit and then looks back at Kon. “Did you say  _ medical equipment _ ?” 

****

Breaking the sunstone free of the mountain takes time. It’s not the task so much as the risk, however; Starfire’s solar radiation powering the exposed pieces seems to speed the process beyond the point of safety as the sunstone essentially harvests itself. As the chunks grow larger and larger, they pull themselves from the wall, compromising the structural integrity of the cave. 

Batman sighs. “Gather as much of the sunstone as you can before this collapses. We can return in shifts with the rest of the League. If it can hold heat in space, it can reinforce our fortress and maybe form some decent working tech, if we’re really lucky. We’ll sort out how it made the lazarus pit later. Raven, John: protect this area from collapse.” 

Raven’s dark powers creep along the edges of the walls to form a temporary brace cage. Batman is already paging the rest of the League for assistance.

John turns to help by casting a spell of inertia but halts, spotting the sunstone creeping past the edge of the pit. Even Batman breaks off mid-sentence to watch it form a small pillar beside the slowly drying out Kon and Clark, the latter of which is growing more enthused by the second. That excitement seems to hit a peak when the pillar turns into a console and a soft chime sounds. “Operator detected.”

The rocks above them rumble ominously. John sets about actually casting that spell.

Clark prods the crystal and a weak, flickering holographic display shows. 

John dredges up enough of a sense of humor to nudge the littlest assassin with his elbow as he passes. “My, my. Seems the League of Assassin’s superior magic is actually ancient alien medical technology.”

Damian gives him a scathing look. “The honor of the house of al Ghul aside, it seems that this just proves mysticism is a waste of time. One look at you could have told us that.”

John waves a hand. “You know--”

Batman puts a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “This has obviously been here a long time. Thousands of years, maybe hundreds-- look at the sediment layers in the wall. This mountain formed around it, at least this part of it. What is kryptonian tech doing here?”

Clark looks up from the holographic display, eyes shining. “Oh, it’s been here for thousands of years. Almost fifty, I think.” He squints at some of the flickering information. “I think this was a colonizer ship from one of Krypton’s expansion eras. Unmanned. Sent ahead to locate suitable planets and prepare them for colonists. Well, later colonists-- this ship seems to have been equipped with the prerequisite chemical batches to essentially grow and repair worker clones as slave labor--” he looks down at Kon and clears his throat uncomfortably. Conner gives him a dry look. “-- so it obviously predates the wars in which clones gained the obvious freedoms they deserved and our ancestors switched to growing most children in birth pods anyway--”

“Spare us the social history lesson,” Batman interrupts. “What happened to it?”

“It tried to land, but something about the atmospheric data was odd and visual data was lacking. Tectonic activity didn’t seem to be outside of the normal parameters, but it’s final log says it realized there was an actively erupting volcano but not before it had already begun it’s descent and broken away from the deployed--” he breaks off, turning to Bruce with wide eyes. “--terraformers! Bruce, do you--”

“Did they ever activate? Where are they?” Bruce demands, leaning over to see the screen as though he’d spontaneously develop the ability to read kryptonian. “Are they intact?”

“They don’t have to be,” Clark counters, urgently. “We just have to find them and give them enough sunlight to get them working. Even if we can’t fix the planet’s core, we might be able to use the terraformers to keep the surface temperature and the magnetosphere stable. Gravity will still be an issue once the rotation finishes slowing and so will the tectonic plate problems once that fails but--”

John raised an eyebrow. “You mean that this alien tech might save all of humanity?”

“It might buy us time,” Batman countered tersely. “Which is better than nothing.” 

“If the pit is only Clone Miracle-gro,” John breaks in absently. “Why does it drive humans insane? That seems like a sketchy kind of medical science--”

“It’s calibrated by species. The ship adapts the solution, not the other way around and humans are built quite a bit differently than kryptonians,” Clark says defensively, patting the slowly growing computer with one hand as though apologizing for John’s boorish criticism. The crystal has spread and seems to be trying to form chairs beneath him and Kon. “And it says here that the solution has gone off in the thousands of years it’s been pooling in this random cave. Bruce, I told you it smelled rancid.”

Batman points irritably at Kon, who grins up at him. “It worked. Quit complaining.”

“I’m not. I’m just telling you that I was right.” He catches the look. “That we were both right,” he amends. 

****

It’s been three days and Kon still hasn’t spoken. It’s a far more preferable problem than an anxious attachment to a corpse, so absolutely no one is complaining about it. 

It’s unclear just how much he remembers about being dead and he doesn’t seem particularly eager to clear that up (not that he really can without talking, given the paper shortages John’s been cursing for his own selfish reasons). Everyone has their guesses. Batman posits that, given his serene attitude and minimal distress, even if Kon had possessed flickers of awareness in death that he’s since suppressed the memory. Diana argues that Clark’s previous awareness had probably had more to do with the bots, thus, in this case, Conner was obviously in the hands of the gods and restored by their grace, which would not include bogging down his infant soul with recollections of his death. 

John finds both theories a little too rosy.

He wants to believe them, sure, but can’t quite get there. It’s the little things. On the first night back at the fortress, he sees Conner crawl into his cot without prompting and cover himself with the same blanket his corpse had been wrapped in. There’s only two beds in the room, so as John shuts his own door and gets ready for bed, he reminds himself the odds were fifty-fifty the most affable little zombie would pick the right one. 

As the days wear on, he’s even more unsettled. Conner seems to get an alarmingly rapid grasp on who is alive and where everything in the stronghold is situated. Not that it’s hard to navigate or that Conner would be surprised at who made it-- 

John scolds himself. The kid had been alive up until a few months ago. He hadn’t missed that much. It didn’t mean anything.

****

John still wonders and he sees Clark wonder too. Neither of them ask. John wonders if Clark wakes up every morning, looks over at Conner sleeping, and decides he owes himself one more day without knowing.

****

It’s Damian who puts the final nail in the coffin, ironically. The older teen is stiff around Kon, not necessarily going out of his way to avoid him but definitely not interacting with him as much as John had expected, given his repeated confrontations with Clark. Raven mentions that Conner was closer friends with Gar, whoever that was, but that Kon still got on better than most people did with the former Robin. Damian’s face pinches when he looks at the stringbean little alien, but not with anything so direct as dislike. 

The resemblance to Bats helps. John’s been around long enough to recognize the way he looks when he’s besieged by uncomfortable, confused guilt. 

Conner must recognize it too because when Clark is away collecting the sunstone on the fourth day, he flies through the hallways at superspeed to corner Damian in the mess hall-- and wraps him in a bear hug before the other boy can argue. (John snorts to himself under his breath; guerilla hugs seem to be the only way to bestow platonic affection upon Damian). Not that it prevents the brat from arguing after the fact. 

John raises his eyebrows over his toast but says nothing, entertained but unsurprised when Damian pushes him away, sputtering about “mawkish displays of unwarranted affection”. 

The clone boy’s frustration is palpable. Damian doesn’t get what he’s trying to say.

John doesn’t blame the kid for what happens next, seeing as how without speech or a writing instrument, the kid has to resort to pantomiming his way through every conversation anyway. Fortunately the mess hall is mostly empty because John can’t imagine sharing the horror as Kon sighs, drops backwards on the ground with a soft thump, and crosses his hands over his chest in a clear imitation of death. He then scoops imaginary piles across his face and chest before shooting upright to hug Damian again. 

The toast tastes like ash in John’s mouth. 

Kon remembers. He remembers being dead, he remembers Damian burying him, and he’s trying to tell his friend that he’s not upset about it.

John can’t wrap his head around the implications of  _ that  _ as he watches a wide-eyed Damian weakly hug his friend back, so he doesn’t.

****

Kon’s alert and seemingly happy despite his continued silence (everyone’s just sort of agreed the mutism is either a trauma thing or a brain damage thing and left it at that), contributing to the survival efforts with surprising vigor. He seems perfectly comfortable tagging along whenever Clark is in the stronghold and rarely ventures far from his side, though he seems equally unbothered when Clark leaves. It’s weirdly clingy, sure, but John doesn’t begrudge him it. Actually, he’s taking things rather well, in his opinion. Coming back from the dead with the unresolved apocalypse still looming over you has to be profoundly more stressful than living through it the regular way, especially considering that Conner is technically only about three years old. 

In that context, the kid’s a damn trooper.

To the enormous relief of literally every living thing on the planet, Clark seems to have rallied to the point of normalcy. He certainly isn’t trying to carry Conner around anymore, not that he ever needs to look far for him at any given moment. Convenient, that. 

At least, John thinks it's convenient until he sees the teen round a corner and pause mid-step, tilting his head as though listening. His face creases in consternation before he disappears in a blur and reappears outside where Clark is busy unloading crates, eyes pinched as he argues with Batman about something. Conner waves as he flits into the courtyard and grabs a crate to help. The tension is broken: Batman shrugs and wanders off with his tablet, while Clark relaxes noticeably and goes back to work, seeming to take care to keep Kon-El in his line of sight.

_ Ah, _ John thinks.  _ It's not Kon who is the clingy one. _

With the stronghold’s exterior walls lined with lead, x-ray vision is a bust. The kid must monitor Clark’s heart rate and then rush to reassure him whenever it spikes. Now that he thought about it, John realizes Superman’s been pretty damn sedate lately. Working with him has gotten infinitely easier, at any rate.

Luckily for everyone, Conner seems content being Clark’s emotional support animal, living or dead.

Well, John has to admit: Swampy had really come through. Clark is pretty solidly fixed, so long as the brat doesn’t drop dead again anytime soon. Grumbling, John only puts it off for a day or two before sending along a prayer of thanks.

****

Conner’s resurrection is like the sunstone, perhaps. Small at first until it accumulates its own mass. 

****

The not talking thing is the only thing that seems to impede the kid day to day. His health is fine, he’s got friends still alive and things to keep busy with. Even Dick and Kory’s presence, while radically altered, seems to be a positive as far as he’s concerned. Clark certainly goes out of his way to make sure he has everything he needs. 

John just kind of hopes the kid likes games, because for him, every day is fucking charades.

Currently, John spies him trying to talk to Bruce and Diana. They’re in the Corridor of the Remembered, or at least that’s what everyone is calling it since someone started creating life sized charcoal drawings of fallen leaguers along the sliding panels (John’s money is on Damian). While they’re both willing to humor him, they’re also clearly on their way elsewhere and seem to be making an effort not to brush him aside as he keeps pointing to the life sized image of Victor Stone. 

Batman pinches the bridge of his nose and relents. Tucks the tablet-like object made of sunstone under his arm. “Okay, Conner. I’ll bite. What about Cyborg?”

Kon taps the wall again and points to Diana. 

She smiles encouragingly at him, though there’s something weary about it. “Yes, we were together on Apokalips. I wasn’t the one who saw him last, though. That would be John.” She spots him and waves him over. John’s really not in the mood, but it’s a good enough reason to delay reporting for post, so he goes to stand beside her without complaining. “Maybe it’s him you want to--”

Kon violently shakes his head, thin eyebrows steepling across his forehead with frustration. He points insistently at Diana, then back at Victor’s image. Pauses. Taps Victor’s cyborg eye, smearing the charcoal slightly, and then steps forward to mimic the motion on Diana’s. 

She gracefully bumps his hand away from her face. “Yes, we share quite the resemblance now. Is that what you mean?”

Another frustrated headshake. The kid holds his two clenched fists out and makes an exploding noise, in an annoying reminder that he can in fact use his vocal chords, but won’t for whatever reason.

“If you’re trying to ask if Victor survived the explosion of Apokolips,” Batman cuts in, voice firm but not unkind. “I can assure you it’s impossible. The boom tube he opened ripped a hole in…”

Kon flaps his hand excitedly and repeats the motion. 

“You want to talk about Apokalips exploding in the boom tube?” Diana guesses.

A head shake. 

“Opening a boom tube portal in general?” Batman tries. At Kon’s excited nod, he adds, “While it would be further reaching than the localized zeta beam system, we can’t actually form any boom tubes with our current tech. Darkseid had me pull all extraneous motherbox technology from earth--”

Kon taps Diana’s face again.

She gives him a gentle smile. “I see. While that’s a wonderful suggestion, I’m afraid that the motherbox technology that was used to give me and the rest of the former Furies our current bodies -- very similar to Victor’s-- the actual tech was far more… stripped down than his.”

Batman nods as Kon wilts a little. He pats his shoulder. “Ever use a computer at a public library?” he asks, earning himself a somewhat consternated shrug. “You can only do a handful of things because the rest of the operating system is locked. In our case, it’s a moot point. It’s a good idea, but one we’ve already thought of. Victor functioned as a central command for the motherbox tech in the Furies-- I oversaw the installation process myself. Even if we gained access to all of Diana’s functions, I doubt she could form a proper boom tube with the equipment she has.”

Kon sticks out his jaw in a thoughtful way then makes a sweeping gesture, followed by a scuttling motion with his hands like a spider, then a twisty motion like a snake winding. 

“Oh, I got this one,” John says, holding up a finger. “J’onn and Mera, yeah?”

Kon nods, then makes the sweeping gesture at Diana again.

Batman deserves an award, John’s decided. World’s Greatest Scientific Charades Interpreter. “Networking them together might make one or two boomtubes possible,” Batman allows. “But that’s with a heavy emphasis on  _ maybe _ \--” he patiently waits for Conner to finish gesturing at his sunstone tablet. “And yes, the sunstone could feasibly help with that, but it would still be of limited use. Complete, living motherboxes can do calculations based on factors we don’t currently know; we could ask a motherbox to take us to an earth-like planet with habitable conditions and it could find one. Without that sentience, we could open a portal but we’d be limited to destinations we already know of.”

Kon taps the sunstone tablet. 

Diana gives him another smile. “Good thinking, but unfortunately the sunstone data was damaged in dormancy and what did survive is fifty thousand years out of date.”

Batman nods. “Given that Darkseid harvested all the potentially survivable planets we’re aware of, a boomtube would essentially be a harder way to accomplish what we do with the zetas. Since between that and the sunstone not being able to form a functioning ship anymore-- yes, we checked; it can hold the shape, but not maintain atmospheric pressure-- our only real choice is to try to survive on this planet with the terraformers. Which I am currently evaluating. And could very much be key to our continued survival.”

The teen rests his thumb on his chin, already lost in thought. Batman returns immediately to his tablet, but pats the boy on the shoulder before they go.

****

“I don’t know,” Clark says, rubbing the back of his neck. He glances at Kon with open helplessness, who was still clinging to his arm and gesturing to Batman excitedly. “I was talking to him and then he got really excited and started pulling me over here. I really can’t guess what this is about.”

John and Bruce straighten from where they’ve been hunched over a table for the last four fucking hours, testing the sunstone to see if it could hold any potentially life sustaining enchantments. No real luck, so far. They’re due for a break anyway. John pops his neck and raises an eyebrow. “So what were you talking about with him, then?”

Clark winces. “The death of Oa?”

Kon nods and gestures wildly, half floating in his excitement. 

“You’re a weird fucking kid, you know that?” John says with little heat. He pulls out a cigarette and lights up (thank the gods Hawkman had come upon a carton somewhere he was willing to barter for). Scoffs at Clark’s pointed look towards Kon and blows a puff of smoke out of the side of his mouth. “What? He’s literally the biological equivalent of a tank. I saw him slam headfirst into that cave ceiling same as you did. A little secondhand smoke ain’t going to do shit to him.”

Kon wrinkles his nose and waves an arm to dispel the smoke, pretending to gag.

John flicks the cigarette ash at him. “Think of it as end-of-the-world aromatherapy, you obnoxious little zombie--”

“Hey,” Clark snaps. Kon sticks out his tongue. 

Bruce physically inserts himself between them, looking at Kon. “What about the death of Oa did you want to discuss with me?”

Kon holds up his hands in a circle, then furrows his brows, uncertain of where to go from there. 

John groans. “For the love of gods, can someone find this child a bloody notebook and a pen?”

“You already cleaned us out.” Clark sighs. “Nobody stockpiled office supplies except LexCorp and the explosion wiped all that out. I’ve been looking when I’m out on salvage and recovery, but most are damaged or already been used for things like kindling or--”

“Yeah, alright. Fair, but there’s got to be one fucking tablet with a notes function in this place,” John countered, jabbing a finger at Bats. “At least one.”

Bruce gives him a flat look. “I’ve already looked into it. We don’t have enough as it is to accurately handle tracking civilian intake and other essential functions, like inventory management. We can’t spare any for him to carry around for  _ making conversation _ .” The implied  _ especially because his vocal chords work fine and we don’t know why he isn’t using them  _ trailed in the air regardless.

“So scientific charades makes more sense?”

“It’s worked out so far.” Batman rubs his temples as he turns back to Conner, only for the teen to disappear in a quick gust of wind. He turns to Clark, who’s glancing in the direction Kon went but doesn’t follow. “Was he this interested in science before?”

Clark spreads his hands. “No idea. I mean, his grades were good, but he wasn’t a mathlete or chess champion or anything like that. His goals in life seemed to be breaking a million Twitter followers with Beast Boy and eating his own body weight in spicy Cheetos.”

“Hm.” Bruce looks back at the sunstone and shrugs. Rolls out his shoulders. “Well, he’s not terrible at it. Decent enough logic and he’s better at brainstorming than Green Arrow was. Lex’s DNA was good for something, I suppose.”

John makes a choked noise. “Wait. I don’t think I heard that right. Are you saying Lex used his own DNA to make that kid? Tiny Superman is half Lex Luthor?” He takes a steadying drag. Christ. The gossip mills would explode when they caught wind of this, especially since John gleefully plans to disseminate this information himself. “What does that even mean?”

The bloody boy scout rolls his eyes at him and says sternly, “It means he’s got a snub nose and he’s good at math. Don’t read into it.”

With a quick gust of air, Kon returns holding aloft his red, plastic prize: an Etch a Sketch, probably borrowed from one of the civilian families. It looks pretty beat up, which doesn’t shock anyone, considering it’s probably a few years older than anyone in the room. Kon begins shaking it to clear it.

“Ah, Christ,” John mutters, unsure whether to laugh or groan.  _ So this is what life’s come to. _

Clark and Bruce’s faces betray a similar thought process. 

Conner drops it on the table and grabs the dials. John leans back against the edge, preparing to settle in for at least a dozen minutes while the kid plots out a single letter at a time. Fortunately for them, Kon’s superspeed and apparently Luthor-inherited math skills (christ, he is going to tell  _ everyone _ who will listen) make words pop up with mechanical and straight edged precision. His fingers blur.

LIFE ON OA DEAD, Y/N?

Bruce sighs and glances Clark. “Yes. Darkseid wiped out the entire Green Lantern Core, which comprised all intelligent life on Oa.”

Kon shook the toy and started again. BOOMTUBE W/ FURIES?

“Oa isn’t suitable for humans,” Batman says. “It’s far larger than earth and the gravity is too strong for humans without a ring-- or a power source to power one, for that matter. Not to mention the gas clouds make the air toxic and… there’s a few dozen more reasons. Relocating there is not a viable option.”

Kon shakes his head and scribbles beneath the last line. CORE?

Batman grimaces. John knows he’s gotten accustomed to summoning memories of his time under Darkseid, but that doesn’t make them pleasant. Only necessary. “I only sent a portion of the earth’s magma there and given that it was sent to the surface, it will have since cooled into an unusable form. There’s no point in trying to recover it--”

Kon vigorously shakes the board and wipes it clear. OA CORE ALIVE? At Batman’s sudden narrowed eyes, adds, BOOMTUBE OA CORE TO OURS? He looks up at Batman, back down at the screen, essentially out of space. Squints with effort as he fiddles with the dials and tries to add more tiny letters at the very bottom. U KNO WHERE OA, NO MTHRBX

Batman lets out a hiss of breath, eyes flaring as the thought rolled over him. John felt a prickle in his stomach-- Kon was on to something. Even Clark was staring at him like he’d never seen him before. “You’re proposing we use the sunstone to network the stripped down Fury armor, create two boomtubes, and then funnel a portion of Oa’s living core into ours, essentially repairing it and speeding up our rotation by the reintroduction of orbiting mass.”

Kon blinks, clearly not having thought it through  _ that much _ , but presses his hands together and smirks, clearly happy to take credit anyway. 

That’d be the Luthor in him, John decided, eyeing him askance. His lips twitch. 

Superman gives Batman a tight, on-the-verge-of-hope look. “Wouldn’t that destroy Oa? Do we know for sure nothing is alive there?”

“Local wildlife, but not much.” Batman’s hand drifts to his chin, then to the computer inset on his gauntlet. “But Oa’s so much bigger than us, the reduction would barely be noticeable. Some earthquakes and storms, but life wouldn’t end by any means. There’s no one there to notice. We, on the other hand--”

Verging hope became actual, naked hope. “So it could work?”

“Possibly. Assuming Oa’s core has roughly the same material composition. And mass. I can run some figures.” Batman hisses through his teeth again. “If the terraformers can keep things stable on the surface, and we can repair the core ourselves-- assuming I can retrofit the salvaged reapers to handle the transfer-- then we can wait out the rebalancing of the rotation. Earth can self-sustain life again. Theoretically.”

Superman leaps into the air, hovering, giving Batman a curt nod before he flies out of the room. “I’ll gather Diana and the others.”

Batman drifts after him, calling, “Tell them to start on the sunstone overrides--”

All John has ever wanted since the stupid fucking warworld blew up is answers. Any answer, really. He doesn’t even have to like it, so long as it was the certain truth. Maybe Kon’s little brainstorming sesh would result in the salvation of humanity or maybe it wouldn’t. At the moment, John is willing to settle for a stiff ‘probably’.

What he does know for certain is that Fortune’s a capricious bitch who would do whatever the fuck she wants without explaining herself, so if John wants answers he’ll have to get them on his own. 

And he’s so fucking sick of mysteries.

John waits as the sound of them fades then turns to Kon with a scowl. Stubs out his ciggy with an air of accusation. “Alright, spill it, you little bugger. You weren’t some kind of super genius before. Where in the gods’ names did you get this idea now?”

Kon scowls right back at him, matching him suspicious glare for suspicious glare. 

John waves a hand. “I mean, I’m not complaining about the whole saving earth bit, but Swampy wanted to save Superdad from going further over the edge, not to save the world, else he’d have bloody well pitched you into the fucking puddle himself and done it a hell of a lot sooner. Plus, how the hell did he know to do that? He’s never even met you. How are you the key to this whole bloody thing?”

Kon shrugs.

“Don’t give me that. You know something. Tell me. Or I’ll tell Clarkie you were aware while dead.” John winces, hearing himself. Winces again. The last thing they needed was another existentially panicking alien superhero. Acknowledges Conner’s aghast look with a tilt of his head. “Okay, no I won’t, but I promise I will be very annoying until I know everything you do so you might as well tell me now and save us both the bother.” 

Huffing, Kon irritably holds up his Etch a Sketch and shakes. 

“You could just tell me with your functioning vocal chords, you know. That would be easier.”

The kid glares harder.

John sighs. “Just give me some bloody answers. I don’t want any of this mysterious hand wavey horseshit where we all assume it’s angels or the power of fucking friendship or something like that.” He watches Kon check the screen, see that the words are still half there, and resume clearing it. 

Time to change tactics, then. John grimaces and rubs the back of his neck. “Let’s try this. Did you know Swampy told us to put you in the pit, yes or no?”

A headshake. 

“So you won’t know anything about that. Fine. I’ll take that at face value. Maybe Swampy follows your fucking Twitter account and gave his best guess so I’d stop pestering him with prayers. Whatever. But you remember being dead pretty well, yeah?”

Since John had already more or less confirmed it himself, there was evidently little to gain by denying it. Conner glances around (probably checking to see that Clark isn’t paying attention to him, wherever he is), then gives a reluctant nod and an ambivalent shrug. Evidently, his time in the shade of death was about as okay-ish as John’s. That scanned.

“And did anything weird happen while you were dead?” At Conner’s flat look, John adds, “Weirder than the whole body carried around by Clarkie thing. Like, did any gods take control of your body? Any unexpected connections to the source of all knowledge in the universe? Have you been pretending to be Conner Kent but are actually some restless, oddly scientific spirit?” John’s eyes widened. “Are you possessed by Lex’s ghost?”

The flat, disbelieving stare leveraged at him does little to assuage John’s fears. Now that he’s looking for it, there is a passing resemblance. Snub nose indeed. 

The little bugger actually flips him off.

“I’ll take that as a no.” John gives him a flinty look. “To be taken under advisement. Alright, how’d you do it then?”

Kon thrusts the etch a sketch aloft. THOUGHT REALLY HARD. JUST TRYING TO HELP. JERK.

“Yeah, alright. Doesn’t change the fact that everyone’s been thinking about how to save us, including the smartest people in the world so if someone stumbles on a brilliant solution, why is it the mute, undead teenager we dunked in leftover kryptonian growth goo, eh?” John raises an eyebrow, a new idea occurring to him. “Are you the ghost of the sunstone ship’s AI? Is that why you can’t talk?”

The kid’s eyebrow actually twitches. ME. KON. NOT GHOST. NOT SHIP. U IDIOT.

Great. Now that the little brat can communicate, it turns out he’s more ill tempered than John anticipated, circumstances notwithstanding. He’s beginning to see why the kid could be friends with Damian. “Don’t give me that. We’ve already established that you came back from the grave with sudden, miraculous knowledge--”

An angry shake of the toy. NOT SUDDEN. THOUGHT VERY HARD.

“So no ghosts or gods or alternative dimensional beings influenced you? You aren’t some artificial intelligence playing human in a meat-puppet body?” John folds his arms. “Well, that makes no sense. That would mean it’s just luck we brought you back and you figured it out.”

Conner twists his lips and blows out a rush of air that sounds like a concession. Shakes the toy to clear the screen. IM ME. Gave John a furtive, irritable look. MAYBE 1 GHOST HELP. TINY BIT.

“I knew it,” John said, stabbing a finger at him. “It’s always fucking ghosts with these things. Sometimes it’s a wayward god but they’re all tied up right now, so it had to be ghosts. Alright. Spill it. If you’re not a ghost, how did a ghost help?”

Conner shrugged, fiddling with the knobs uncertainly. Eventually, scrawls, DREAMS.

“A ghost helped you in your dreams. While you were dead?” John asks. A headshake. “Since you came back?” A nod. “Okay, fine. What were the dreams?”

SOLVING PROB TOGETHER, Conner writes. Twists his lips. TALKED W/ 

John furrows his brow. Glances at Conner’s earnest, annoyed face and then back at the unreadable scribble on the screen where a legitimate answer should be. “You fucked that word up or you’re fucking with me. It sure ain’t English.”

Kon blinks at the scribble and tries again. GRANDPA.

John deflates a little. Maybe dying and being reset by the space juice really did unlock some genius meta gene or something. Or encouraged the damn kid to apply himself for the first time ever. The little twat.

The answer was feeling less and less mystical the longer the conversation went on-- ghostly visitation would explain missing knowledge, but John’s pretty damn certain Raven said Kon’s grandparents were farmers. The ghost of Clark’s Pa might earnestly want to help save humanity, but the dead couldn’t spontaneously understand interplanetary science in the afterlife. Maybe it was just luck that was saving them now. “Sounds like a nice dream, mate. I suppose you guys were close. Bet it cheered you up to have him visit ya and talk things over.”

Kon clears the board, seems ready to walk away but hesitates. Scrawls NOT THAT GRANDPA.

“Luthor family reunion? Christ, nevermind kid. Sounds like a bloody nightmare--”

Kon shakes his head with a sigh. Points at the sky and mouths  _ Jor-El _ . Realizes he’s just unlocked a whole new round of questioning and grimaces before he bolts for the door at superspeed.

Well, it’s an answer. Rather a shame it comes attached to  _ so many other questions _ .

He chases after the kid. “Wait. Kryptonian ghosts? You mean we got saved by an alien ghost? Was it the ship? It’s way too old to house a spirit the right age-- How is that even--? Oi. Use your words! Come back here, you little--”

John really fucking hates mysteries.


End file.
